Sumtastics

This week I’ve been training up the staff at Ashdown Lodge Nursery in Apperley Bridge in our new nursery version of Beat Dyscalculia, Sumtastics, ready for them to trial it for us.

Sumtastics was originally designed to work as a ‘club’ in Private Day Nurseries, like more established language, music and dancing clubs, delivered by trained Sumtastics practitioners who come into nursery on a weekly basis to deliver specific themed sessions. However, more and more when we’re going into Primary schools to train their teachers in the Beat Dyscalculia programme, we’re also training their Early Years staff. Ashdown Lodge is therefore trying out our Sumtastics programme and resources in their own setting, delivered by their own staff.

One thing we’re discovering is that the programme, which includes songs, stories and activities, and encourages children to use all their senses to explore numbers, also helps children meet many of their Early Years goals in areas such as counting, reading, colour, language, drawing, speaking, singing, games, social interaction. And the Early Years teachers are enjoying having a ready-made programme that’s fun, but also meets all these targets without them having to create something themselves.

Ashdown Lodge are taking the ideas from each of our sessions and putting them out as individual small activities for children to choose and complete in small groups. They’re then using the songs and stories, based around a set of crayons that come to life each night and add colour to the world, to bring everyone together for the start and end of each session.

We hope that ultimately, Sumtastics will give children a good grounding, understanding and interest in numeracy that continues through school, and which can continue with our Beat Dyscalculia programme as they get older.

We’ll let you know how things progress as the trial continues, however, in the meantime if you’d like to know more about Sumtastics or Beat Dyscalculia for your nursery or school, please contact us.